A Sacramental Life
Jesus came to bear witness to
the light Transcendent. Saints incarnate themselves by the behest of the
Supreme Father of the universe to raise humanity from ignorance, error and sin
to the life Righteous and Beatific. Saint Tukaram has said, “We live in
Vaikuntha, but we come down to help humanity.” The All-powerful spiritual law
that governs the universe manifests itself in infinite forms to establish
itself in the realm of manifestation. Each form thus manifested bears witness
to the Light Eternal. The suffering of the son of God, Christ, is a brilliant
example of how the incarnated symbol of the eternal bears witness to its
source. There is a great meaning implied in the suffering of the Saints,
whether it is deliberately imposed upon himself by himself in the form of
ascetic denial or it is imposed on him by external agencies. He that loves the
world loves not the Father, and he that dies for the sake of the son of God,
truly lives. To die to the narrow life of the earth is to live in the peace
that passeth all understanding.
Christ has said that he came
here to obey the commands of his Father, to do the Will of his Father. And he
has also said that the heaven of the Father is within all. This means that the
life of the Saint is a sacrifice done for the sake of asserting the spiritual
law of that which is within all. The All which is within everyone is the true
Father of humanity and all beings. The life of man is meant to demonstrate the
goodness and the love, the wisdom and the truth which is his own origin. The
assertion of the righteousness of the universal life which is an expression of
the great Father in heaven requires therefore the assertion of all the unifying
forces in this world of diversity. The life of the saint is a sacrament, a holy
act, a divine worship. Suffering is inevitable to the saint who is the son of
God, for, as the Christ has said, the one that is of God has no place to rest.
Nothing here can satisfy the infinite impulse to be righteous and to do the
righteous. From birth to crucifixion the life of Jesus has been a saga of the
process of self-perfection. The incidents in his life represent the microcosmic
as well as the macrocosmic changes that take place in the history of the
evolution of the universe towards Self-realization in the existence of God.
Every phase of life is a
necessary moment in the continued endeavor of the universe to recognize itself
in Self-consciousness and unity of powers. Though the life of every person is
indicative of the nature of the entire evolution of that individual, past as
well as future, resulting in the experience of perfection, the life of Jesus,
as well as of Sri Krishna, is a direct illustration of the conscious and
systematic movement of the consciousness from its rudimentary individual state
to the fully blossomed attainment of the infinite Godhead.
Jesus reveals himself in this
world at a time when the king of the country strives his best to oppose him.
Jesus has to be protected by being taken to a distant place. He grows up under
mysterious circumstances and begins to preach the gospel of Divine Life. He is
opposed again, tempted in several ways, charged with guilt, tried in court,
found fault with, and crucified.
The soul of man, in the same
way, begins to peep out through its material vestures when it finds itself
hemmed in by disturbing powers of the physical and the mental world. The
spiritual spark has to be saved from being extinguished completely. This is the
preliminary step in the practice of Yoga. Sometimes the soul loses itself in a
dark night and, later mysteriously emerges out of the same to assert itself
with its full dignity and power. It begins to establish its law in all that it
experiences and while doing so the powers of the manifested universe come in
conflict with its super-normal behavior. The individual soul with its new
alignment with the Supreme Self finds itself persecuted by the natural forces
of the world. It is tempted vehemently, tried in all possible ways and declared
unfit for a natural life in the world. It finds it impossible to live at the
same time both in the conscious realm of God and the lusty world of man. It
abandons itself to the Will of the Supreme and for the sake of this beatific
union with the Infinite it casts off its individuality and ceases to be an
element in the changing and objective plane of death, where the passions drag
one away from God.
The teachings of Christ constitute
the essential principles that regulate the course of the spiritual aspirant in
his quest of the great ideal. Faith is the fundamental key to success in
spiritual life. Christ has also warned people that many may come in his garb
but may not be real teachers. One has to be aware of these deceitful ones and
lay one’s trust in the true teacher, the Christ. The power of faith is such
that, as Christ puts it, even a grain of it can move a mountain hence. Thought
of food and raiment is not to become the burden of the aspirant. It is the
instruction of Jesus that God knows more than man and that He knows how to
protect man. The one duty of a person is to come to Him alone for rest, light
and salvation. But “not everyone that sayeth unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter
into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in
heaven.” It is not verbal humility and devotion but sincere feeling of
dedication and surrender that can take one to God. Spiritual effort has its aim
not in public worship, adoration in the streets and beating of drums, but
silent sacrifice and intense feeling of union with the One without a second. God
reveals Himself to man not until he becomes ready to sacrifice his life for His
sake.
The greatness of the devotee
of God is like a sweet fragrance which makes itself felt by all, by its very
presence. “They are the light of the world; a city that is set on a hill cannot
be hid.” The spiritual essence that constitutes the core of a person in union
with Divine, reveals itself, of its own accord, without any kind of effort on
the part of the person who is the medium of that revelation. The sun does not
proclaim himself when he rises in the sky, but his very presence makes itself
felt by those who have eyes to see and sense to feel. The owl does not know the
sun, the blind does not see the light, the ignorant are not aware of the moving
spirit of God that dwells in the tabernacle here and shines through the saint.
The acts of Christ and his disciples are to be taken not in the sense of
processes that have their end in the fulfilment of an individual wish, but as
parts of cosmic movement tending to the establishment of God’s glory in the
universe.
The life of Christ is a
veritable sacrament, an outward and visible sign of inward and spiritual grace
that descends from the Sovereign of the universe. It is the unbounded love of
God that came in flesh and suffered for the sins of humanity to raise the
latter to the source of this love. Love and sacrifice are the key to open the
door of immortality. Prayer, not for one’s own salvation from pain, but for the
redemption of others from the ignorance of the law of God, is the true form
which love and sacrifice takes in the life virtuous. The miracles which Christ
performed are indicative of the Omnipotence of Him for whose sake Christ came
here. The mission of the life of Jesus is not merely to open the eyes of man to
the light that shines beyond the dust of the earth, but also to hoist the
banner of the kingdom of heaven on this very earth, by winning for
righteousness victory over evil and the temptations of Satan. Life here is a
blending of the relative laws of the earth and the absolute law of God. “Render
unto Ceaser the things which are Ceaser’s; and unto God the things that are
God’s.” A development of the aspiration for the Spirit, in harmony with the
rules that regulate the kingdom of God and the kingdom of the earth, is
necessary in order that the aspirant may be free from the error of the
over-emphasis of non-essentials and of neglect of essentials in this relative
life. Man is God and brute crossed at one point, and so he has to transcend the
brute by an intelligent application of the divine power within him to what is
active in him as the undivine force.
Christ was a great realist when
he stressed the importance of kindness, love, service and worship of God as the
Father in heaven. He was a great idealist when he asserted that the kingdom of
heaven is within. The oneness and the organic nature of the universe is what is
made explicit by his synthesis of the real and the ideal nature of human
experiences in the universe. God is within and also without. The world is
within us and also without us. Asceticism and love are both our duties. A
parallel integration of the interior and the exterior forces through spiritual
regeneration would confirm the kingdom of God on earth. In the teachings of
Christ a careful student finds wisdom and holiness, metaphysics and ethics,
realism and idealism, self-withdrawal and self-expression, knowledge and its
object, fused into one, in a most wondrous and comprehensible manner. Only a
God-man can do it, and Christ was one such. His life is a precept, and his
precept is the word of God, by hearing and following which the unending
beatitude of man is made secure.
Excerpts from:
A Sacramental
Life – Christmas Message by Swami KrishnanandaArchives - Blog
If you would like to purchase the print edition, visit:
http://www.dlshq.org/cgi-bin/store/commerce.cgi?
http://www.dlshq.org/cgi-bin/store/commerce.cgi?
If you would
like to contribute to the dissemination of spiritual knowledge please contact
the General Secretary at:
